In our past two Logs, we’ve answered your questions about sailing
safely offshore, about cruising with children, about the emotional aspects
of concluding the cruising life. This week, we include here our last
bits of advice to those of you who’ve recently written to ask us
questions. Again, many thanks for taking the time to connect with us.
Even after we conclude our BoatUS log, in June, we invite you to keep
in touch if we can ever be of help to you as you go forward with your
own cruising dreams.

Buying Real Estate In The Caribbean

FROM ADEEL A, via email: “ I've immensely enjoyed reading
up on your blog over the past year, and while I'm not nearly close to
catching up with your latest adventures, let me say that I've been enthralled
by your description of sailing in the Caribbean. Couple that with
an amazing trip to the countryside of Tobago, and I've been convinced
that I would like to have a second home in the islands. It seems
like you had at some point contemplated the idea too. What convinced
you not to? In your travels, what areas represent the best value
at this point? Unfortunately, people have already "discovered" my
preferred choice, Tobago, so I'm casting a wider net. Ideally, a
beautiful view of a sunset from a mountain-top perch overlooking a bay
where I can see your sailboat bobbing would be what inspires me.”

FROM BERNADETTE: During
the six years we’ve been cruising, we've
seen many American ex-pats buying land in Panama – either waterfront,
or up in the mountains near Bocas Del Toro, on a volcanic lake. Panama
is almost like the 51st state of the United States, because we ran the
Canal for so many years, and there are so many Americans there already,
and so many people speak English. It's still beautiful and remote, however,
and at the same time the medical care is at a high professional level
in the city, and the
shopping is great. Also, there is a large “development” happening
on a beautiful hillside near the coastal town of Portobello, Panama. Condos
and house sites are being designed with Americans in mind. Buying land in Panama
is attractive to foreigners because it’s possible to get clear title
to property.

Cartagena offers relatively inexpensive living and scads of condominiums
with views of the sea. At night, the old city is always ablaze with
lights and activity.

If you like an antique city, with lots to do, Cartagena would be a
great place to live. And the real-estate prices are still relatively
cheap. You can buy into a modern condo overlooking the harbor and sea,
for instance, or you can still buy a spectacular courtyard house in the
Old Town, and fix it up, for a small fraction of what the same place
would cost here. And the cost of living is cheap, too.

When we traveled
through Mexico and Guatemala, we met people who had bought land and built
houses. Generally, though, we heard warnings about investing there because
of land-rights issues. Apparently, it’s not easy to get
clear title to property in those countries.

Two of our friends bought a house
on an island in Honduras. They got a great deal on it – cheap
enough that they could imagine leaving it there as a place for their
extended family to use as a vacation house during the winter.

Guatemala offers spectacular land sites with majestic views of volcanoes,
lakes, and mountains. We were seriously tempted to buy a small piece
of land there.

We know an American couple who just built a beautiful
house overlooking a spectacular lake in Nicaragua, and they plan to use
the house once a year for three months or so. Our friends say that the
surrounding land has been purchased by other foreigners, and retirement
homes are going up here and there around them. Again, the cost of living
is low in Nicaragua.

Americans are buying waterfront land in Belize,
too, at good value.
Two of our American friends bought a piece of waterfront land, and
built a house three years ago, and their investment has more than doubled.

The attraction is that all these countries offer Americans
terrific value on their dollar. It’s easier to afford having a cook and
housekeeper, for instance. In most cases, you’ll need to have a
caretaker working for you – such labor is cheap in Central and
South America – and that caretaker keeps the house safe while you’re
living part of the year in the States.

This is the view from the house of a friend of ours who bought land
in Roatan, one of the Bay Islands of Honduras. They loved their home
there, but when their home was broken into one evening while the
man was away, the woman of the couple was pistol-whipped with a revolver
and lost many teeth. After the local authorities were uncooperative,
they sold their home and moved away. Today they are cruising on their
sailboat.

Douglas and I did toy with the idea of buying
land somewhere in Central or South America. In the end, though, we didn’t find a place that
sang to us – maybe because the most beautiful places, with the
best property-rights situations, and the best values, were being populated
by communities of Americans, and that made it a little less interesting
to us. Plus, we decided that it would be more cost effective for us to
just rent a house somewhere that intrigued us for a period of time, rather
than deal with being an absentee home-owner.

Weird Food For Thought

FROM CORRINE S., 8 years old, via email: “I
was wondering, what is the weirdest food you had to eat while you were
out sailing in those other countries ?”

FROM BERNADETTE: Thanks for writing, Corrine. I remember the day perfectly,
even though it was three years ago now. We were at Isla Pinos in the
San Blas, and it was a very windy day, blowing about 35 knots. This means
that all the palm trees had their leaves all blown back so much that
from my view on the boat, they all looked like Indian heads in profile,
with big feather headdresses. I had laundry out drying, and the wind
was so strong that it almost blew all my laundry off the lifelines.

Isla Pinos is a very traditional island, meaning
that the little kids aren’t accustomed to seeing tall white people
such as Douglas and me, and they start crying in fright when we get
too close to them. The island is very pretty. Everyone lives in little
thatched huts, and the women wear brightly colored mola outfits. Well,
I took in the laundry when it was dry, and when the wind died down
Douglas and I decided to go ashore and explore.

Iguana is a tasty meat but quite stringy. Everywhere we went in Central and
South America, iguana is a staple of the diet. Wed happily eat it again.

While we were walking around, a Kuna woman invited
us into her hut with great excitement. She pointed to two little wooden
stools, and we sat down as she busied herself with some cooking, and
then put some food on a plate and gave it to Douglas and me. At first,
we didn’t know
why shy had pulled us inside. Then we realized that this was pure hospitality – she
was showing us that she was happy we were visiting her island – and
her generosity and openness amazed us.

I looked on the plate. There were some small eggs,
about the size of large marbles, and some meat that looked like chicken
legs. I smiled. She smiled. Douglas smiled. Her frightened children
hid behind the hammock. “Well,” said
Douglas, “let’s do it.” He picked up the chicken leg – a
safe choice – and started nibbling. I did the same. It wasn’t
chicken – I had no idea what it was -- but it wasn’t bad.

Bernadette thought the iguana egg was a bit greasy, but Douglas
liked it and ate several. Protein, he claims, is protein.

Then there were the eggs. She actually bit the top
off them – the “shells” were
very soft -- and they were raw inside! She showed us how we should just
knock the egg back down our throats, as if we were swallowing an oyster.
Douglas, who’ll try anything, sent it down his gob. Somewhat disgusted,
I braced myself and did the same. I thought my guts would come up my
throat! All the while, our hostess was smiling and pointing at her dog,
who was tied to a post nearby. Good lord, I remember thinking, I hope
to God that wasn’t dog meat we were eating earlier.

Sometimes it’s hard to communicate with people who don’t
speak the same language as we do. It took us some time to figure out,
but finally the three of us made sense of each other. It turns out that
her dog was an iguana hunter! The meat we were eating was roasted iguana
legs, from a giant iguana hunted down by this little dog. And the eggs,
heaven help me, were soft iguana eggs! I felt feint when I heard this,
and realized what I had eaten. But at the same time I felt overwhelmed
by the generosity of this poor island woman who was so happy to share
her treasured meat with two strangers, and to show us how proud she was
of her little treasure – a dog who could sniff out iguana eggs.
Looking back on it, I remember that although the egg was a totally weird
goo inside, the leg was pretty tasty! Corinne, I guess the moral of this
story is that you just have to try new stuff all the time. You never
know when something wonderful will come your way!

Where Does The Day Go?

FROM MARK H., via email: “I can’t imagine what you do all
day on a cruising boat. I think I’d go a little crazy being cooped
up on a boat week after week, on an endless vacation.”

FROM BERNADETTE: I know, it’s difficult to imagine the cruising
life when you’re living at home. Somehow, though, every day is
full on a cruising boat. Here’s our experience. When we were actually
under way, sailing, we were totally consumed with navigating; sailing
the boat well day and night; taking turns on watch; monitoring the radar
to avoid ships, and adjusting our self-steering vane to keep the boat
on course; keeping everything on the boat safe, in good working order,
and moving well. There were two of us, and so to us the clock measured
duration of watch rather than night and day or set intervals; one person
was generally asleep while the other was on the job.

Every day at anchor involves some form of boat maintenance, and often
that is the focus of the day.

It’s different though at anchor. When we were on hook, our days
were more in sync with sunrise and sunset. Early mornings, on the single-sideband
radio, we downloaded weather information and spoke with other cruisers.
Then we worked on the boat, did routine and endless maintenance, fixed
whatever had broken or was wearing out or corroded – a constant
challenge on a boat in a salt-water environment. Our division of labor
had Douglas handling all mechanical tasks and navigation – a huge
responsibility for which I was so grateful. I was in charge of most of
the sailing and subsistence responsibilities: I made most of our meals,
made yogurt, grew sprouts, handled preserving of food – by necessity,
as there’s no place to buy these things in most of the places we
liked to go. And I took care of the finances at home, the provisioning,
cleaning, laundry, and I assisted with the boat projects that were ongoing
every day.

Bernadette is getting ready to snake the radar cable from the bottom
of the radar pole into a conduit in the lazarette, and from there
it will run to the back of the nav station.

Many days, when chores were done, we put
on our wetsuits, hopped in the dinghy, and spent two or three hours free-diving
and snorkeling on the magnificent coral reefs – for pleasure, and for dinner. Douglas
took his spear gun and loved to hunt fish and lobster. If we were near
civilization, we’d go ashore and explore. In the evenings, we marveled
at the sunset, made a meal, watched the blackness settle in, and read
or just fell asleep early! Sometimes we’d hang out with other cruisers
with whom we might be crossing paths. To keep up with news, we listened
to the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) or the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation) and sometimes we could get NPR (National Public Radio) on
the single-sideband radio. One of the great luxuries of this trip is
that we had more time for reading than at any times in our lives, and
because we chose not to have a television or VCR, this was a wonderful
focus for our leisure.

Reading proved to be one the greatest luxuries of our trip. Cruisers
are always trading books and magazines. Unlike a library at home where
we collect books, the goal on small sailboats is to make sure the
library is circulating and changing.

Once a week, we had a deadline for this BoatUS website,
and every month we wrote a column for the back page of Cruising World magazine. In
it we took turns writing about the cruising life, what it was like to
live aboard, what we were doing, and where we were going. The writing
kept our foot in the door of our professional lives, but more importantly,
it pushed us to be creative and stay juiced – something that made
the cruising experience that much more fulfilling.

NOTE TO READERS

Now that Bernadette and Douglas are back in the U.S., any groups or corporations interested in booking them to perform their inspirational slide show, The
Radical Sabbatical, can reach them by emailing SV_Ithaka@hotmail.com

For Douglas, the great passion of cruising became spear fishing.
The afternoon this photo was taken, he nailed a 24-pound grouper
that fed several boats for several days.